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Friday, November 28, 2014

Tales from the Borderlands: Gosh I miss the shooting

welcome back to pandora!

When I first saw the trailer to the new upcoming game to the Borderlands franchise, I was ecstatic. Not the prequel one though with Handsome Jack, but rather the one happening after his death, revolving around two new characters. One the Hyperion hotshot wannabe Phys, and the other a Pandorian con artist Fiona.

The trailer promised something ala Mass Effect style of gameplay, where your choices matter, rather than the old shoot everything without question gameplay. Being someone who loves open ended gameplay, I was curious. So I bought the game just when it was released.

meet the two characters you will be playing

While the game stays true to the details that make Borderlands, Borderlands, from the music, sarcasm, dialogue and visual, it is a far throw away from the traditional Borderlands game that you would expect. If you are expecting a face paced and adrenaline inducing style that is commonly associated with Borderlands, this is not the game for you.

Rather than having to control anything, the whole game boils down to a more story focused type of gameplay, where the only thing that you get to control is the dialogue choices that you make in game.

there's a timer for you to make a choice too

So basically it's really a lot like Mass Effect. You can either be a dick or saint to those around you, and the choices you make do have consequences, such as a friend remembering a promise you make or if a character stays alive. Other than that, it is really much a point and adventure game, with the occasional quick time events, which really does not change the gameplay much. In a way that if you miss a button, you end up dead. Simple as that.

press the down arrow to avoid the oncoming axe attack!!

Other that that, the gameplay gets dull really quickly. From what I've experienced, the dialogue choices sometimes do not change things really much, for example if you said A happened, another NPC will pop in and say in fact B really did happen, if the story wants to move in that way. Though I've played only Episode 1 so far, with four more to go, so I've not really seen a lot yet. But I would not expect anything to change much.

It's really like watching a Borderlands 2: Post Handsome Jack short film or an interactive comic, rather than a game.

you get to meet some old characters too

But despite the lack of action or the ability to wield the awesome guns that define Borderlands, the game still feels pretty neat. It expands on the Borderlands story in a very unique way, giving us the ability to see Pandora from both the eyes of a Hyperion executive and a Pandorian native, in addition to building the story of other characters as well. There was even a vault hunter appearance in the first episode, and it was pretty amusing to actually interact with a vault hunter, when you have really been playing a vault hunter all along.

So far I'm loving the story, and am definitely going to replay again to see how a change of choices would affect the game. And like the usual Borderlands story, it is pretty amazing as well to see the development of the characters. Particular in this game. I would give it a 3 out of 5, for the story sake.